Home of the Mandinmories

In an interview with ABC News, Bennett said that anyone who knows him knows he isn't racist. He said he was merely extrapolating from the best-selling book "Freakonomics," which posits the hypothesis that falling crimes rates are related to increased abortion rates decades ago. "It would have worked for, you know, single-parent moms; it would have worked for male babies, black babies," Bennett said.

First off, let us get this straight right now -- Bill Bennett is RACIST. From the above statement, I surmise that he is not only racist but unapologetic about it. Don’t fall for his Crapo cola. Talk of race can always get dicey as we sometimes seem to be debating from two separate sets of opinion depending on our biases. However what we need in a situation like this, is adherence to truth and acceptance that billy boy's commentary are not factual. Below are some of the things we all can agree upon:

• The vast, overwhelming majority of black Americans are not poor, much less criminals.-
• Race plays no role in whether someone will commit a crime.-
• The majority of crimes (all types included) in America are committed by white people (DUH! They are the majority).

That said, why didn’t Bill Bennett extrapolate the aborting of fetuses from any other race to cut crime in America but blacks? The jerk says he is not a bigot after he says about the most bigoted thing I've ever heard. Before this is all said and done he will act like a common klans man and cower behind the first amendment. So anyone still making excuses for him can kiss my whole black ass. And I mean that in the most sincere way.

Reports coming out of the Gambia has the opposition NADD retaining three of the four contested seats in the by elections held today. Todays events are triggered by the ruling of the supreme court vacating the representative status of messrs Halifa Sallah, Sidia Jatta, Kemeseng Jammeh and Hamat Bah. The later (Hamat Bah) been the only one reported to have lose his seat.

NADD should make sure no shenanigans were employed by Yahya Jammeh and his cronies to dillute the electorate as Hamat has previously claimed that almost tweenty five hundred voters have been illegally transfered to his constituency. Don't throw in the towel until every reasonable suspicion is clarified. Whatever they do NADD leadership should never pull an ousainou darbo in this case.

But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you
could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky… Bill Bennett

Hmmm. This illustrates how compassionate a conservative he really is. Isn't this the same bozo that has a gambling problem? I knew he think like that; but it is kinda shocking though to hear him said it out loud. Racist asshole. But it's not about racism, I keep telling ya! Some indignant fool reading this post will say. To them I say: Oh, forget it. It is. It so is. Always has been, too. Denial is a powerful force, but it's exhausting.

I'm going to bet my next paycheck that he will claim to have been taken out of context. Any takers?

You know, you don't have to actually go to the trouble of aborting black babies billy boy. Letting them die of dehydration and exposure during a national disaster is much less work, and you don't get the fundamentalists up in arms either.

I think there are two lessons we need to take away from the Katrina fiasco:

First, the people we saw rioting in New Orleans are America's flotsam, and they exist in every society. Other than the physically disabled, young children and seniors 80 years old and up, the people we saw holed up in the Superdome and elsewhere are the perfect demonstration of what happens to people who choose (yes, choose) to lead third-world lives in a capitalist society.They were accustomed to living off a government check every month, accustomed to subsidized housing, accustomed to food paid for by food stamps. They've elected politicians like Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco to make them comfortable in that third-world existence, and now they have neither the resources nor the political leadership to survive in a time of crisis. Such has been the case throughout history for people who don't take charge of their lives.

When I started reading this, I thought to myself here goes another redneck, but then I realized Billingsly is himself black…God is he pitiful or what? I guess these are the kind of people Cynthia called Negroes.

I got one question for this moron though…what "rioting"?

Billingsly says "the people we saw rioting in New Orleans are America's flotsam..." but the only New Orleans people I saw on TV were the old people sitting patiently in their wheelchairs in front of the Convention Centre. And the mothers carrying two or three children, calling for help. Oh, and I saw the same footage over and over of a few dozen people carrying TVs and armfuls of clothes out of a couple of stores.

I have to admit that I skipped most of the article. Black Republicans bore me. The one comment that stuck with me was the 'flotsam' comment. Of all the harmful stereotypes, the 'they are all on welfare and food stamps' is the most harmful. We have a lot of poor people in this country, more of them white than black, and most of them contribute more in taxes than they receive in services. Yes, 'the poor will always be with us' but, we don't have to have a society that is actively hostile to poor people's interests.

This might really sound stupid. But you know what has really amazed and shocked me about this? It's the eye-opener regarding how absolutely poor and isolated much of the population of New Orleans was prior to Katrina. And how much of a distinct culture it was. I must admit that I really had no idea.

Although I'm white, I've lived predominantly black neighborhoods in Washington DC, Seattle, and Texas at various times, and thought I had a certain sense of Black America. But after going down to the Astrodome and meeting other Katrina evacuees here in Waco I realize that New Orleans really was different.

Even the style of dress is different. I see the women wearing these colorful dresses and headscarves that are completely different from how black Texan women dress. It's a style of dress that's almost more African, more like you'd see in Nigeria or Bahia Brazil. My wife's clinic in Waco serves a mostly black and Hispanic population and she says the Katrina evacuees are instantly recognizable. She can instantly tell from their dress, language, and comportment who's from Texas and who's from New Orleans. She says that a lot of the women she's talked to have never been out of New Orleans in their entire lives. That Waco is the first place they've ever been. Imagine that.

I don't have any better guess about how this is all going to work out than anyone else. My instinct is that it will be sort of like any other immigrant wave. The adults will have difficulty adjusting to new circumstances and many never will. The kids will quickly if not instantly adapt to their new surroundings.

Ok who is falling for this bullshit?

Black Evacuees from New Orleans can't possibly be similar to Americans from other states… No way … to be that poor and that illiterate, they must be Africans.

How this supposedly white guy who grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood in Washington DC can say… ‘Even the dress style is similar to Nigeria or Brazil’...How the fuck is that similar? Do you want to tell me the people you saw on television are either pulled from a swampy village in South America or West Africa? Really?

Is it so hard for Americans to be confronted with their own poverty? Must Americans always live in denial and when faced with the truth, attempt to brush it off as some kind of African disease?The gap between the haves and have not in America has always been wide and has always been in existence. The truth has constantly been swept under the carpet, or in some quarters blame is placed on the poor for not making it.

The poverty of most New Orleans evacuees is third world indeed. I bet the writer has never been to an African country? So from images plastered on his TV screen, he came to the conclusion that these people eerily look similar to what he show on the national geographic channel. Poor, black and illiterate? They’ve got to be African.

The minute you walked in the joint. I could see you were a man of distinction. A
real big spender . . .Hey big spender, spend a little time with me…Dorothy Fields

With his lowly army origins, taste for excess and contempt for democracy, Yahya Jammeh is in many ways a cliché of the African Big Man. This man has no shame at all. He came to New York with a plane load of per diem collecting cronies and end up spending $10,000 organizing a picnic in the big apple. Hey, big spender…Dorothy Fields classic adored by my wife comes to mind. Where did he get the foreign currency when the average Gambian is destitute you might ask? And why on this particular group of people who are well off compared to the living standards prevailing in their homeland.

But that is African elitism for you. From east to west, the pattern is drearily repetitive. Keep just enough at home to rig the next election, pay off the army, build a garish palace (complete with Olympic-sized swimming pool), buy yourself an old soviet made plane, then stack the rest in offshore bank accounts in your relatives name and occasionally throw chump change at citizens in the diaspora who can’t compete in the merit based societies of their host countries. Whatever you do, get the money out of the country and never bring it back. Yahya learnt the trade from the old masters…the Sani Abachas of western Africa, who allocated millions of barrels of his nation’s crude to yahya no questions asked. Don’t tell me he wasn’t aware that proceeds from the sale of crude meant for the Gambia ended up in Yahya’s big ‘Waramba’ pockets.

It is no wonder why Asia, with comparable economic indicators in the 1950s surpass Africa in economic growth rates. It is caused by a group of Africans headed by the Yahya Jammehs that relentlessly cannibalizes the system, consuming and stealing from the very industries, agricultural sectors or aid flows on which its prosperity should be based.

But should we be all doom and gloom about the future of Africa? Not if you subscribe to the view of anti- corruption campaigners, who pin their hopes on the emergence of a savvy new generation of urban Africans-whose members attended American and European colleges. These young men and women, the thinking goes, will not look to the government for future employment, are less likely to be swayed by tribal loyalties and are less ready than their forefathers to attribute automatic value to western symbols of prestige, whether a Swiss bank account or a home in Atlanta…most of them already had one.

"The phenomenon of capital flight is essentially born out of an inferiority complex," says a Kenyan business journalist. "For that inferiority complex to disappear, you need at least one generation of stability and market-based success. It is destined to fade as society changes, and the agent for change will be the emerging urban middle class."

Until that generation seizes the reins of power, (we are looking at October of 2006 in the case of Gambia if the NADD experiment bears fruit); any development programme that fails to tackle what the Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo has described as "a bigger threat to Africa's development than Aids" risks being doomed from the outset because the Yahya Jammehs will continue to raid the cookie jar while the rest of their country men starve.

Detroit is not the crime hell hole that it is portrayed to be around the country. Granted there is a lot of work to do to curb crime in Motown. Unfortunately the city had to layoff 150 police officers, 75 firefighters and 10 battalion chiefs in a bid to reduce a $300 million budget deficit and avoid the take over of it financial management by the state.

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's conduct during his first term hasn’t been helpful either. His behavior ranging from cookie jar raids to a city produced cable news attack segment on a TV reporter who got under the mayor’s skin has been a frequent embarrassment for the city.

So now, fittingly with a month before the November mayoral elections, some of Kilpatrick’s supporters who decline to say anything when the mayor proposed a junk food tax as part of his fiscal vision are mounting an insidious slur…emphasizing that his challenger Freman Hendrix isn’t black enough

The term black enough always trip me out. You will think that after all these years of living in this experiment called America; I should have a fairly good grip on the intricacies that are involved with the issue of melanin. You would be wrong… I can’t fathom why people of African descent, no matter the hue of their melanin still harbor such attitudes towards each other. Yeah I understand the slavery angle, but do we as a people have to harbor grudges against each other regarding whose ancestors got a worse treatment from the slave master? Who gets to pick cotton and who stays in the house to do chores? We are in this together now and the faster we get that through and through the better for our future.

U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General
Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14, 2005. World leaders are
exploring ways to revitalize the United Nations at a summit on Wednesday but
their blueprint falls short of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's vision of freedom
from want, persecution and war. REUTERS/Rick Wilking Email Photo Print Photo

Funny, George never goes to the bathroom at home.... Um, he is not even sure. He "think" he may need a break, and then he ends with a question mark. If you're not sure, then you don't need to ask Georgie. I wonder what Condi's response was...Hmm could it be "hold it Mr. President"? but I digress.

Bill Maher's closing bit the other night:

"Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more. There's no more money to spend--you used up all of that. You can't start another war because you used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people. Listen to your Mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit card's maxed out. No one's speaking to you. Mission accomplished.

"Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man? Now I know what you're saying: there's so many other things that you as President could involve yourself in. Please don't. I know, I know. There's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

"But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes.

"On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.

"So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: 'Take a hint.'"

Hat tip to Mark Crispin for the link.

During a press conference in Gulfport Mississippi, a distraught resident tired of hearing the bullshit that Vice president Dick Cheney is spewing, walk up close and say this:

"Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney!! Go fuck yourself!!!

Cheney used to the ‘yes sir’ coterie of aides looked visibly pissed. I mean really pissed. He went on to lie when a reporter asked him the following question: "Do you get that a lot, Mr. Cheney?" He replied, "That's the first time I've heard it. Must be a friend of John er.. uh.. never mind." Say it ain’t so Mr. Cheney. I thought your only ailment is a failing heart…amnesia was never reported. Just to refresh your memory dear Darth Vader, this is what you told Senator Leahy on the floor of the united states senate…sounds familiar? Pay back is a bitch if only so many people didn’t have to lose their lives and livelihood before some one finally gets to tell this asshole in his face what to do with himself.

Here is the video link thanks to the folks at crooks and liars.

Approximately $2 billion US with much of the money coming in the form of U.S. government assistance. Each settler family will receive between $200,000 to $300,000 US and the opportunity to relocate to other communities being created for them inside Israel proper. Most of the houses, synagogues, buildings and military infrastructure in the settlements will be destroyed before the land is handed over to the Palestinians.

And now this:

But the bulk of the money would go into a Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief fund that is offering debit cards of $2,000 per household to victims evacuated from homes in Louisiana and Mississippi. FEMA anticipates handing out 320,000 cards, at a cost of $640 million, to help displaced residents buy clothing, pay for transportation and other "emergency supplies they need," Director Michael Brown said.

That is right our government is paying Gaza settlers a hundred times more to vacate land they shouldn’t be on in the first place as opposed to helping citizens displaced by Katrina.

The Jewish settlers are getting $2 billion dollars distributed amongst 8000 families while the administration is touting the spending of only $640 million in the form of $2000 debit cards to American citizens displaced by the worst natural disaster that ever hit this shores. This is an outrage.

We believe that it would send the wrong message to the American people for the Senate's first item of business upon returning from recess to be the repeal of the estate tax. It would be insensitive to focus the Senate's attention on those with so much when so many of our citizens have lost everything...

Those were the words of Harry Reid and Max Baucus (democratic leader and Whip in the senate respectively) they went on to elaborate on what they and the democratic caucus want the senate to do in addition to the $10.5billion allocated to FEMA. As Cynthia posted here most of that fund might end up in Halliburton's coffers and by entension right into Dick Cheney's pockets. Below is the full text of the Senate democrats proposals:

KATRINA RELIEF PLAN FOR SENATE ACTION THIS WEEK

Although the Congress last week appropriated $10.5 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Defense Department, it is clear much more will be needed given the enormity of this disaster. While government authorities and others assess the scope of the problem and decide how much additional funding will be needed to address specific problems, there are a number of legislative items the Senate can and should promptly approve that can help Katrina's victims. After the Senate has completed action on this emergency legislation, we hope the Senate will quickly provide significant new funding, and consider other substantive proposals that could help address short- and medium-term needs. These proposals must be followed by a much broader, long-term effort to rebuild and rehabilitate the Gulf Coast region and substantially improve efforts to prevent, mitigate and respond to future disasters.

The following are just some examples of proposals that Senate Democrats believe deserve immediate Senate action this week:

Ensuring health care for all displaced victims

* Immediate access to Medicaid for displaced victims.

* No need to prove residency or assets

* No copayments

* No penalties for failing to sign up for Medicare Part B in time.

To ensure access to medical care, we should ensure immediate access to Medicaid for displaced victims. Paperwork requirements should be streamlined and asset requirements waived to ensure that victims, many of whom have no legal documents in their possession, can enroll in the program with little red tape. Residency requirements for participation should not apply to these victims to allow them to obtain health care services around the country. In addition, copayments should be waived for these people as they struggle to meet other needs as well.

The Federal government should bear the full cost of these changes, and ensure that no affected state suffers a reduction in Federal Medicaid funding (their "match rate") for other populations. This proposal is based on a similar successful initiative after the September 11 disaster.
We also should provide compensation to health care providers who provide a disproportionate share of the care for these victims.

Displaced victims should not be penalized for late enrollment in Medicare Part B because they have become newly-eligible or have lost coverage from another plan during this time. Similarly, everyone from the affected states should have an additional year to enroll in the new Medicare drug benefit and its low income subsidies. The automatic transition of dual eligible beneficiaries from Medicaid to Medicare drug coverage should be delayed in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, with the Federal government bearing the full cost of those people continuing Medicaid drug coverage.

Getting victims housing
* Emergency housing vouchers for displaced victims

* Expedited application procedures with no red tape.

* No tenant contributions until they find work.

* Tax incentives for private families to take in victims.

* Identify federal facilities that can house victims.

* Relief for homeowners facing threat of foreclosure

FEMA has said that up to 1 million people may need housing assistance. The Senate therefore should immediately authorize the Department of Housing and Urban Development to create and distribute temporary emergency housing vouchers to victims, without many of the restrictions that apply under the existing Section 8 low-income voucher program. For example, victims should not have to document their income levels, and tenant contributions should be waived until they find work. HUD also should be authorized to increase existing limits on allowable rents given the likelihood that rents in Gulf Coast areas will increase substantially for the foreseeable future. HUD needs to take over primary responsibility for distributing vouchers since many of the region's local housing authorities are not functioning at full capacity, if at all.

Given the scarcity of rental housing, we will need to rely on private individuals and families to provide free room and board to victims. To encourage this, we should immediately approve a tax subsidy for those who provide such assistance to Katrina's victims.

To help identify locations to house victims, the Administration should be required, within 10 days, to release an inventory of federal civilian and defense facilities that can be used to provide emergency housing, or as locations for the construction or deployment of temporary housing units.

We should increase aid to owners of damaged homes by waiving current law caps on home repair assistance (now $5200) and home replacement assistance (now $10,200). In addition, we should waive a requirement that individuals leave their home to qualify for home repair assistance, a rule that threatens to exacerbate an already massive demand for shelter in the region.

We should reestablish the Temporary Mortgage and Rental Program, which has been used in the past, including after the September 11 disaster, to provide assistance to homeowners and renters facing financial hardship. This could be important for many victims who otherwise could lose their homes through foreclosure.
Getting victims to family members and friends

Many of Katrina's victims have little or no access to transportation. Although FEMA has legal authority to address this, the agency seems overwhelmed and has proven unable on its own to meet the compelling needs of countless numbers of stranded victims. We therefore need to make this a White House priority and direct the President to lead a broad effort to quickly ensure that displaced victims can get to family, friends and others who can provide them with room and board.

Getting students into school

Many of Katrina's victims are children who need to enroll in a new school. To encourage schools to accept these victims, and alleviate some of the resulting burdens, we should provide funding to school districts that accept displaced children. This funding could be used to hire additional teachers, teachers' aides, or counselors, or to provide temporary expansions of classrooms. A similar program should be provided for institutions of higher education that admit displaced students.

Bringing victims' families together and placing them with other families

The government should establish a toll free "800" number and web site through which victims could access a national victim database and information about available assistance. Displaced individuals could register and provide contact information, so that separated family members and friends could find each other. The database also would allow volunteers to sign up if they are willing to provide free shelter to victims.

Getting victims cash to meet other basic needs

To ensure that victims can get cash for their basic needs, we should strengthen and expand the Disaster Unemployment Insurance Program and automatically extend any expiring UI benefits that victims are receiving. We also should give the President authority to increase the $26,200 statutory cap on cash assistance through the Individuals and Households Program, and should waive the 25 percent matching requirement for States in the Gulf region. In addition, victims should be allowed to withdraw funds from individual retirement accounts (IRA's) penalty-free, with extra contributions permitted later.

Providing financial relief to victims and National Guard

Katrina's victims, and National Guard involved in disaster operations, should not be obligated to make payments to the Federal government in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. There should be a short term moratorium on obligations such as:

*Student loans

*Individual and corporate income taxes

*Small business loans

In addition, disaster victims filing for bankruptcy should be treated differently under the bankruptcy code in recognition of their particular hardship.

Ensuring victims have access to food

We should ensure that the many victims of Katrina who are struggling to obtain food have access to food stamps through a streamlined application process. States should be provided relief from the additional costs associated with administering the food stamp program for victims.

Restoring order

We should provide law enforcement funding where needed to help protect innocent citizens from crime and to ensure that there are places in which to imprison dangerous criminals. In addition, we should authorize federal courts to convene outside of their ordinary location in the event of an emergency, such as the massive flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Helping victims get jobs

Private employers should be given an incentive to hire displaced victims by temporarily qualifying them for the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which can reduce an employer's tax liability by up to $2400 per qualified new worker. In addition, the Federal government should establish a temporary preference for hiring displaced victims who are qualified for jobs.
Moreover, many displaced workers now lack the documents they need to secure employment under Federal law, such as passports and birth certificates. This law should be relaxed temporarily so that victims can legally obtain work without such documents, so long as they can provide a valid Social Security number.

Supporting the National Guard

We should ensure that Guard units serving in the Gulf Coast effort be considered to have been mobilized under Title 32 (they are currently mobilized through the states). This would qualify them for federal benefits and ensure that their service counts as active duty for the purposes of retirement, health care, and other benefits. It also would make them eligible for the Family Separation Allowance if separated from their families for more than 30 days, and could provide relief from creditors and foreclosures.

Requiring accountability

We should require the President to submit regular reports to the Congress on the status of recovery efforts, the number of victims who remain without decent housing, jobs, etc., and any additional resources or action needed to address the crisis.